Friday, March 18, 2005

I'm coming to the conclusion that writing code, as an activity, really is like writing prose. I find myself treating code projects just like writing projects:

I spend the first part of the project thinking about it and being (apparently) very unproductive. (25-30%)

After I reach some sort of critical mass in my thinking, I very quickly pour out everything into code/onto the page. The project is 80% done as far as volume goes at this point. (10-20%)

I spend the rest of the time editing, bugfixing, refining, etc. (50-60%)

For larger projects, this cycle gets repeated for each component of the project. This is precisely the pattern I followed when writing my dissertation. I don't know if this kind of working method is in any way typical, but it does seem to produce the desired results. It makes giving project completion estimates next to impossible though, because I really have no idea how long the project will take until I enter the hyper-productive phase, and when that's complete, I often still have a lot of work to do, even though the bulk of the code/writing is done.

This is why it's best for me if I've got some variety in a job. The hyper-productive phase really can't overlap with anything else: if I'm interrupted then, I'll get off track and it may blow the whole day, but in phase 1 or 3 I'm better off not spending all my time focusing on the project, because I'll just end up web surfing. Or blogging.